Latest / Reformed Thinking / Cleansing: A Covenant Blessing (Ezekiel 36:25) | Charles Spurgeon

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Cleansing: A Covenant Blessing (Ezekiel 36:25) | Charles Spurgeon · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reformed thinking. So usually when society talks
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about approaching the divine or, you know, even just getting your
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life together, there is a very specific sequence of events we
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are all expected to follow. Oh yeah, the classic sequence of
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cleaning up your ACT. Right.
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You realize you made a mess. You scrubbed the dirt off your
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hands. You put on your best suit.
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And only then do you dare to knock on the door of the
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Almighty. Yes, the assumption is always
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that you must be presentable before you can be accepted.
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But today, we're taking a deep dive into a message that argues
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the complete opposite it. Really flips the script.
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It does. It's a striking sermon by
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Charles Haddon Spurgeon. It's titled Cleansing a Covenant
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Blessing and he preached it from the biblical text Ezekiel 36.2.
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Five a fantastic text. Yeah.
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So the mission for our deep dive today for you Listening, is to
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unpack the paradox right at the center of Spurgeon's message.
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He argues that God's grace does not wait for you to get clean.
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Not at all. Instead, it targets people right
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in the middle of their absolute worst filth.
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It is a staggering reversal of the normal human religious
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instinct. Honestly.
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Spurgeon points to the Covenant of Grace, which he calls the the
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Magna Charta of Saints. That's.
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A great phrase. In the title deed of the
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inheritance, when he uses that kind of legal binding imagery,
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he is tapping into the core of how God relates to humanity.
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Because the entire basis of this covenant, the whole reason it
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exists at all, revolves around the problem of sin, right?
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Sin broke the original covenant of works.
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It stands as a barrier, a plague, and just a nightmare
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separating humanity from the Creator.
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And before any fellowship can be re established, that barrier has
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to be dealt with. Yeah, and the terms of this
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magnet artist state that God is the one who initiates the
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cleanup right in the muck, in the mire.
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He meets you there, and I mean, Spurgeon does not pull any
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punches when he diagnoses the human condition.
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No, he's brutal. He really is.
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He describes sin in incredibly visceral terms.
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He calls it the curse of curses, Fountain of Hell and father of
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the Devil. Yeah, he says it withered
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paradise and sewed the earth with thorns.
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So, you know, we're not talking about a minor character flaw
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here. It's not a slight personality
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quirk. No, he insists, sin saps our
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strength, destroys our comfort, and acts as the foe of all good.
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We have to establish why a cure is needed at all before we look
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at the cure itself. And his diagnosis is bleak.
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That severity is crucial to his entire argument, though.
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I mean, if you diagnose the disease as a slight cold, you
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might think a bowl of soup and some rest will fix it.
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Just sleep it off. Right.
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But Spurgeon is diagnosing A fatal systemic corruption.
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To illustrate the severity and the contagious nature of this
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condition, he goes back to the Old Testament.
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To the Book of Numbers. Yeah, he brings up the typology
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of the red cow or the red heifer.
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In the ancient Israelite ceremonial law, if a person
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became unclean, say by touching a dead body, they were placed
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under a strict quarantine. They were totally cut off.
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Completely. The ashes of a sacrificed red
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cow were kept in water, ready to be used for ceremonial
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purification, but until that specific water was sprinkled on
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the unclean person, they were entirely shut out from the camp.
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That quarantine aspect is so vivid to me.
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The person was physically removed, they could not converse
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with the priests, they couldn't participate in the community,
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and they certainly could not approach the Tabernacle to
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commune with God. They were isolated.
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Yeah, but what stands out to me is how contagious this
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defilement was. It wasn't just about the person
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being isolated, it was about the threat they posed to everything
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around them. Everything they touched.
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Exactly. I mean, if the unclean person
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touched a chair, the chair became defiled.
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If they touched a vessel, the vessel was contaminated.
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Even the tent they entered was considered unclean.
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That contagion is the key to understanding the spiritual
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reality Spurgeon is describing here.
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The ceremonial law was a physical representation of a
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spiritual truth. OK, unpack that.
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Well, Spurgeon uses this to show that the Sinner in the sight of
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God is a source of defilement. He calls the Sinner a well of
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foul waters, a fountain of bitterness.
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Yeah. The unregenerate human heart
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doesn't just contain sin, it spreads pollution.
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Any action, any thought, any interaction is tainted by this
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inherent uncleanness. This renders the person entirely
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incapable of pleasing a pure and holy God.
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You know, hearing that description makes me think of
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modern biohazard containment. Oh, that's a good analogy.
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Think about it, If you have someone who has been exposed to
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a severe, highly contagious pathogen, we do not let them
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walk into a crowded grocery store.
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Definitely not. We put them in a negative
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pressure room. We wear hazmat suits around
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them. We isolate them because they
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contaminate everything they touch.
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They have to be quarantined for the safety of the entire
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community. Spurgeon is essentially
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describing the center as a spiritual biohazard.
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The person is a walking contagion whose very presence
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spreads pollution, making them totally unfit for the camp of
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God. The biohazard analogy is very
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fitting here. In a biohazard scenario, the
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contaminated person cannot cure themselves.
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No, they need outside medical intervention.
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And they can't be allowed to mingle with the healthy
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population. They're completely cut off.
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Which brings us back to Spurgeon's central thesis.
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This state of total isolation, this condition of being an
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absolute spiritual biohazard, is the precise starting point where
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God finds His people. He goes to the quarantine zone.
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He does. God doesn't wait for the
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contaminated person to somehow neutralize the pathogen on their
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own. He steps right in.
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So if the person is quarantined and contagious, the rescue has
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to come from the outside. The mechanism of rescue cannot
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originate with the patient. And Spurgeon is adamant that
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there are absolutely no prerequisites for grace.
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Not at all. God begins to deal with people
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while they are still in their sin.
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He doesn't wait for a sound spot on the patient.
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He doesn't wait for them to show a little bit of improvement or
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expect them to be clean first. He uses the language of leprosy
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to describe this. Spurgeon says God doesn't wait
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until he spies out some sound spot in the patient.
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But when the person is covered with leprosy from head to foot
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and there is not one sound speck in them as big as the point of a
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pin. That's a graphic image.
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It is, but that is when the Great Physician comes.
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This is the concept of prevenient grace.
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It's grace that precedes human decision or action.
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Meaning God makes the first move.
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Always God takes the initiative. He approaches the individual on
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terms of grace, not on terms of merit.
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If there were any requirement for the Sinner to clean
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themselves up first, it would be a covenant of works, not a
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covenant of grace. Which would defeat the whole
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Magna Charta idea we talked about earlier.
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Spot on. Spurgeon gives a couple of
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really memorable metaphors to drive this home.
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He talks about a hospital. He says Christ House of Mercy is
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a hospital where sick folks are welcome.
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Yeah, you don't go to a hospital because you are healthy, you go
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because you are diseased. Right.
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And the hospital exists not to spread the disease or to treat
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it lightly, but to conquer it. Then he uses the illustration of
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a ragged school. For those who might not know, in
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Victorian England, ragged schools were charitable
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organizations dedicated to the free education of totally
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destitute children. Kids off the street.
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Yeah, living in absolute squalor, Spurgeon says.
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The teachers in these schools welcome the dirtiest children.
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They don't welcome them because they love the rags, but because
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they want to wash and instruct the children.
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Those metaphors highlight the objective of God's grace.
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It meets you in your lowest state, but it has a specific
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goal. Spurgeon also brings up a
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fascinating historical anecdote to illustrate how scandalous
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this kind of grace appears to the outside world.
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The Rome story, right? He mentions how the ancient
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heathens used to mock Christianity.
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It compared the Christian Church to the founding of Rome by
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Romulus. OK.
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Remind us of that legend. According to the myth, Romulus
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populated his new city by opening an asylum and gathering
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all the criminals, the debtors, the outlaws and the discontented
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runaways from the surrounding towns.
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Basically the worst of society, right?
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The heathens meant this as a slander against the early
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Christians, mocking them as a religion of the abandoned.
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And Spurgeon just leans right into it.
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He embraces the insult completely.
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He says there is much truth in that statement.
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He calls it a sinner's gospel and says the Lord receives the
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devil's runaways. He wears it like a badge of
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honor. He does, but hold on, I have a
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massive problem with this. What's the problem?
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Well, if you tell people that God accepts the absolute worst
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offenders like spurgeonless thieves, drunkards, harlots, and
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infidels. If God accepts them just as they
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are, without any prior cleanup, doesn't that just hand them a
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license to stay in their mess? I see where you're going.
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Because if the hospital welcomes the sick without condition, what
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stops the patient from just enjoying the hospital bed and
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refusing medicine? That is the classic objection to
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free grace. People have argued that for
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centuries, and Spurgeon anticipates it beautifully.
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He clarifies that God receives sinners to cleanse them, not to
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leave them as they were. The cleansing is guaranteed,
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yes. The promise in Ezekiel is I will
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make you clean, not you are clean enough.
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The ragged school teacher brings the child in to remove the rags,
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not to celebrate them. Right, they don't frame the rags
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and say good job, no. Christ's Hospital is a place
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where the disease is discovered, isolated and destroyed, while
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the invitation is completely unconditional.
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Come just as you are. The result of accepting that
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invitation is an absolute overhaul of your condition.
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It's a complete tear down and rebuild.
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Grace is free, but it is not passive.
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It actively goes to work on the defilement.
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OK, so the acceptance is the starting line, not the finish
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line. That makes a lot of sense.
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So then why is this outside intervention necessary at all?
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What do you mean? Well, why can't the listener
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just try harder? We establish that God initiates
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the rescue, but human nature always wants to contribute
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something to the effort. Like let me watch my own face
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first. Oh, absolutely.
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We hate feeling helpless. Spurgeon addresses the futility
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of self scrubbing. He brings up a theological rule
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regarding miracles. He points out that God does not
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go beyond natural laws if natural strength remains.
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Right. God does not do what humans can
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do for themselves. If there is strength left in the
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natural laws, God allows those laws to operate.
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He doesn't waste miracles. Precisely the fact that God
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promises to intervene directly with a miraculous cleansing,
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then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, proves that human
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effort has completely failed. God's intervention is required
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precisely because humans possess a total inability to cleanse
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themselves. The natural mechanisms for
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purification are broken. Completely broken and Spurgeon
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uses this to push back hard against the theology that was
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popular in his day and honestly is still popular now.
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The idea of inherent goodness. Yes, the idea that people,
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especially children, are born basically good.
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He talks about people claiming that children are born gracious
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and do not need renewal. Spurgeon totally rejects this.
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Oh, he hates it. He stands firmly on the biblical
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stance That which is born of the flesh is flesh.
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He insists that he was born in sin, and that in his flesh
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dwells no good thing. If you believe you are born
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inherently good, or even just morally neutral, then you will
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logically conclude that you can maintain or restore your own
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purity through good behavior or moral effort.
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Because the tools aren't broken yet.
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Right. But if you recognize, as
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Spurgeon did, that the corruption is woven into your
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very nature from birth, then you realize that any attempt to
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cleanse yourself is like trying to wash a shadow away with a
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flashlight. You were using the wrong tools
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for a fundamental problem. Spurgeon shares his own personal
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testimony to make this point. He talks about how he tried to
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purge his own heart and get quit of sin.
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He says he scrubbed and cleansed and he labored at it as honestly
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as anyone could. But it didn't work.
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His failure was complete. He uses an analogy of washing a
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hot and tot, referring to an African tribesman saying that
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washing only made him realize how black he was and the soap
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only whitened him for a passing moment.
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And then he goes to the book of Job.
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Yeah, he quotes Job, who said if I wash myself with snow water
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and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me
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in the ditch, and my own clothes shall abhor me.
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The imagery of snow water from the Book of Job is particularly
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spiking there. Why snow Water specifically?
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Well, snow water was considered the purest form of water
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untouched by the earth. It hasn't picked up any dirt or
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minerals yet, Job is saying. Even if I use the absolute best,
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most pristine human methods to cleanse myself, God's standard
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of holiness is so high that I will still look like I have been
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plunged into a ditch of filth. Wow, even our best purity is a
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ditch to God. Yeah, and Spurgeon adds another
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massive image to this. He says you could sooner redden
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every wave of the Atlantic Ocean by plunging your hands into it.
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Then you could take away one spot of condemnation from your
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own soul. The scale is just unmatched.
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The scale of the stain is cosmic and human effort is microscopic.
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Imagine a person trying to wipe down a filthy, muddy floor,
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right, but the only tool they have is a rag that is already
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soaked in mud. They're doomed from the start.
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Exactly. They are on their hands and
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knees scrubbing with all their might.
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The effort is genuinely there. They are sweating, they are
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working hard, but because the tool itself is compromised, they
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are just smearing the dirt around.
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Just make it a bigger mess, yeah?
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They might create a streak that looks clean for a split second,
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but the mud from the rag immediately fills it back in.
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That is what self cleansing is like.
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The human will, the human heart is the muddy rag.
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The very instrument you were using to achieve righteousness,
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your own will, your own heart is the source of the defilement.
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Spurgeon notes that even outwardly moral people
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experience this. Right, he talks about his own
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youth. He mentions that at age 15, he
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had avoided gross public vices. He was, by all societal
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standards, a good kid. He wasn't out robbing banks.
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No, but he felt his internal filthiness more than anyone.
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He loathed himself because he saw the internal rot.
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He realized he had lived for years without truly loving God.
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That's the core issue. It shows that the defilement is
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not just about breaking rules. It is an orientation of the
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heart away from the Creator. That internal orientation makes
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self rescue an absolute impossibility.
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So if we cannot use our own water, what is this clean water
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promised in the book of Ezekiel? How does it actually work?
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God says, I will sprinkle clean water upon you.
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If the virgin snows of the Alps or the deepest subterranean
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springs cannot yield water clean enough to remove sin, what has
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God provided? God provides A purification that
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is entirely alien to human capability.
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It comes from outside the national water.
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Spurgeon breaks down the specific mechanics of this clean
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water, and he describes it as a twofold cleansing.
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Twofold. OK, break that down.
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This dual nature is absolutely vital to understand.
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It is not just one thing happening, it is 2 distinct but
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inseparable actions. First, there's the blood of
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Christ. Yeah, second, there's the work
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of the Holy Ghost. OK, let's look at the blood of
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Christ first. Spurgeon is talking about
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substitutionary atonement here, right?
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Yes, he explains that God must remain just.
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God cannot simply wave a magic wand and pretend sin never
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happened. Because sin causes real damage.
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It causes real damage, it breaks real laws, and justice demands a
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penalty. You can't just sweep it under
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the rug. God remains just while punishing
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sin by laying that punishment on His Son Jesus.
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Christ bears the penalty in our place.
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That is the first half of the clean water.
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It deals with our legal standing.
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The blood of Christ handles the guilt and the condemnation.
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It is the objective historical reality of the cross applied to
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the sinner's Ledger. It clears the debt.
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But this is crucial. If that were all that happened,
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the Sinner would be legally pardoned, but internally
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unchanged. They'd be a free criminal, but
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still a. Criminal.
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Exactly. They would just go right back to
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producing the same filth. This is where the second-half of
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the clean water comes in. The Holy Ghost.
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The spirits work is inward renewal.
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Yes, the Holy Ghost removes the fundamental love of sin and
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creates new desires, a new heart, and a right spirit within
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the person. So the blood changes our status
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and the spirit changes our nature.
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You know, this dual cleansing makes me think of rescuing a
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massive bankrupt business. OK, how so?
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Imagine a corporation that is billions of dollars in debt
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completely failing and about to be liquidated.
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The blood of Christ is like a wealthy benefactor stepping in
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and paying off the billions in debt instantly.
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OK, the legal status of the company is suddenly clear.
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Right. The creditors are satisfied the
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bank isn't foreclosing, but if you leave the same corrupt
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management in place, the company will just go bankrupt again next
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year. Because they don't know how to
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run a business. Yeah, the Holy Ghost is like
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bringing in a brilliant new CEO to entirely restructure the
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company's daily operations, change the corporate culture and
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ensure they actually produce something of value you moving
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forward. That's a solid analogy.
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The legal debt is cancelled by the blood, and the operational
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structure is renewed by the spirit.
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Both are necessary for the business to survive, just as
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both the blood and the spirit are necessary for the center to
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be cleansed. They go hand in hand.
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Always, Spurgeon emphasizes the unfailing efficacy of this dual
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cure. It doesn't just attempt to
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clean, it accomplishes it completely.
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He uses that Greek myth, right? Yeah, an illustration from
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classical mythology. To describe the sheer strength
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of this cleansing, he references the labours of Hercules,
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specifically the cleaning of the Augean stables.
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That is a gross story. It is these stables housed
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immortal livestock and hadn't been cleaned in 30 years.
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Just decades of immortal manure. It's disgusting, but Hercules
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diverted two rivers to wash out the immense accumulation of
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filth in a single day, Spurgeon says.
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The labors of Hercules are entirely outdone by Jesus.
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Because Jesus washes out the human heart, which is way worse
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than any stable. He also uses a biblical
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illustration mentioning the idle Dagon falling flat before the
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incoming Ark of the Covenant. In First Samuel.
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Right when the Philistines captured the ark and put it in
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the temple of their fish God Dagon, they came in the next
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morning and found Dagon fallen on his face before the ark.
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He literally bowed to it. Yeah, Spurgeon says.
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Your sins, your pride, your lust, your unbelief, they will
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all go down at a stroke. Just like Dagon.
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When the presence of God enters the heart, the clean water has
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an unstoppable force. It really does, but having the
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medicine in the pharmacy does not heal the patient.
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OK, good point. How did this clean water
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actually get applied to the individual listener?
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This brings us to the necessity of external application and the
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mystery of faith. Spurgeon is very clear about
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this external application, he says, quoting Ezekiel.
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I will sprinkle. God is the one doing the
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sprinkling. He's the active agent.
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Yes, Spurgeon gives us an analogy of a wounded man.
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He says if a medicine, a healing plaster is made and just left
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beside a wounded man who is too weak to move, that man will
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still die because. He can't reach it.
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Exactly. He cannot apply it to his own
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wound. The same God who devised the way
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to save and provided the clean water must be the one to
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actually sprinkle it on the soul.
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The application happens through faith, but faith itself is a
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massive struggle for the human mind.
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Why is that? Well, Spurgeon shares a pastoral
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story about a young man who came to him completely confused by a
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hymn written by Doctor Isaac Watts.
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Oh, I know this one. The lines of the hymn are a
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guilty, weak, and helpless worm. On Christ's kind arms I fall.
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And the young man was upset about that.
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He was deeply distressed because he told Spurgeon he could not
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fall. That story highlights why human
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beings complicate faith so much. The young man is treating
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falling as an action he has to master.
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Like a technique. A technique he needs to learn.
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But falling is literally the cessation of effort.
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It requires 0 strength. You just let go.
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Yeah but it is the hardest thing in the world for a proud self
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reliant person to do. Is like a drowning fighting
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person fighting off a lifeguard. Oh, that happens all the time in
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real rescues. It does.
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The lifeguard swims out and says just go limp, stop kicking, stop
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thrashing and let me carry you. But the drowning person panics.
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They want to help. They try to swim, they try to
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climb on top of the lifeguard, and their effort only pulls them
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both under. The drowning person thinks
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they're kicking and saving them, when in reality their surrender
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is the only thing that can save them.
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The abnegation of all doing and all effort is what faith truly
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is, but our evil hearts pervert that simplicity into a complex
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mystery. We want to contribute.
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We want to thrash. We want to thrash, and because
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we are so resistant to simply falling, Spurgeon asserts that
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even the closing act of faith is wrought in us by the Holy Ghost.
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Wait, so even the believing itself is a gift?
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Yes, it is an absolute miracle to receive faith.
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You cannot generate it by your own willpower.
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Spurgeon is very blunt about this.
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He says this nullifies human free will in the matter of
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salvation. He quotes the Psalm saying he
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was made willing in the day of his power.
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He realizes that if left to his own devices, he would have
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continued to refuse the mercy. He would have perished in his
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sin if divine grace had not first convinced him of his folly
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and then actually given him the ability to believe.
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He traces everything back to God.
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God. And he extends this reliance on
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God's grace, the very beginning of salvation, all the way to the
21:44
end of life. Meaning you don't just need
21:46
grace to start, you need it to finish.
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Right, he uses the beautiful illustration of the diamond
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doorstep of heaven. What's that?
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He says that even if you made it all the way through your life
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and you had your foot on the diamond doorstep of heaven and
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your singer on the golden latch of the door, without continuous
22:04
grace you could not enter. All your previous effort would
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be in vain if God did not sustain you in that final
22:11
second. The grace that sprinkles the
22:14
water initially is the exact same grace that carries you
22:17
across the threshold it. Completely removes any ground
22:20
for boasting. You cannot look back and say,
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well God gave me the medicine, but I was the smart one who took
22:24
it. God provided the medicine.
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God held your head up, and God poured it down your throat when
22:29
you were too weak to swallow. That's the reality of it.
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So we know the patient was a biohazard.
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We know the clean water is the blood and the spirit.
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We know God applies it. What are the exhaustive,
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all-encompassing results of of this applied grace like?
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What exactly is washed away? The text from Ezekiel says From
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all your filthiness and from all your idols, will I cleanse you?
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That word all is doing a tremendous amount of work here.
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It really is. Spurgeon breaks down this
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comprehensive list to show that God leaves no stone unturned.
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He lists birth, sin, the natural temperament, the Constitution.
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He covers the whole lifespan. Yeah, he goes through the stages
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of life, the filthiness developed in youth, the sins
23:11
that vex manhood, the dishonor of old age.
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And different types of sin too. He covers the secret sins hidden
23:17
from the world, the public sins known to everyone, the sins of
23:20
the family, the sins in business.
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He tells his listeners to run right down the 10 commandments
23:25
and recognize that the promise applies to every single
23:27
violation. He takes a very strict stance
23:29
here, particularly regarding how we view our own flaws.
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He warns against making excuses. We love to make excuses.
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We do, he says. People will say well I always
23:38
was quick tempered and I must always remain so, for this is a
23:40
part of my natural temperament. Spurgeon says absolutely not.
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He refuses to let us call our sin a simple infirmity.
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He demands that we call it an infamy.
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The distinction between an infirmity and an infamy is
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vital. How would you define the
23:55
difference? An infirmity is a weakness you
23:57
cannot help, like poor eyesight or a limp.
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You are a victim of an infirmity.
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You didn't choose it right. But an infamy is a moral
24:06
rebellion. It is a crime against God's
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holiness. When we call our quick temper or
24:11
our pride and infirmity, we are acting like victims of our own
24:15
nature. We're asking for pity instead of
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pardon, that is. Such a subtle trap.
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By insisting we call it an infamy, Spurgeon forces us to
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take responsibility for it, which is the necessary posture
24:26
for receiving the cleansing water.
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You cannot be cleansed of a sin you're currently trying to
24:30
justify. Spurgeon shares a vivid analogy
24:32
involving The Cave of Kings from the Book of Joshua to illustrate
24:35
how we hide these infamies. Oh, the five kings, Yeah.
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In the biblical narrative, 5 enemy kings hide in a cave.
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Joshua's men roll large stones over the mouth of The Cave to
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trap them there until the battle is won.
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And then what happens? Joshua orders the stones rolled
24:52
away, brings the kings out and executes them in the sun.
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Spurging compares our secret sins to those kings hiding in
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The Cave of the Secret Heart. We get very quiet about certain
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sins. We push them to the back of The
25:04
Cave, they bide their time and they don't even whisper.
25:07
They just hide. We foolishly roll a big stone
25:10
over the mouth of The Cave and congratulate ourselves.
25:13
We think the sins are dead because we cannot currently see
25:16
them. We manage our outward behavior
25:18
and assume the internal rot is cured.
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But Spurgeon says the true Joshua, referring to Jesus, does
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not tolerate this dangerous experiment.
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No. He wants them dead.
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Jesus commands those hidden sins to be brought out.
25:30
He drags them out of The Cave and hangs them up in the sight
25:33
of the sun. They must be entirely
25:35
eradicated. It sounds brutal.
25:37
It is, but it is the brutality of a surgeon removing a tumor.
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It has to be exposed to be destroyed.
25:43
This eradication extends to the second-half of Ezekiel's
25:47
promise, the text says. And from all your idols, will I
25:51
cleanse you? Now, we often think of idols as
25:54
statues of wood or stone. Right.
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Like something you bow down to in an ancient temple.
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But. Spurgeon makes it clear that the
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unregenerate human heart is an idol factory.
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We will worship anything rather than God.
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A person will sooner worship themselves than their Savior.
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The cleansing process involves the total abolition of these
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internal idols. Spurgeon uses another fantastic
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biblical story here to illustrate how sneaky we are
26:19
with our idols. He talks about Rachel from the
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book of Genesis. The camel furniture.
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Yes, when Rachel leaves her father Laban's house with her
26:27
husband Jacob, she secretly steals her father's household
26:30
idols. Just talks them away.
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Right, and when Laban catches up to them and searches the camp
26:35
for his gods, Rachel takes the idols, hides them inside her
26:39
camel saddle furniture and physically sits on them.
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She claims she can't stand up because she's sick.
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Exactly, Spurgeon says. Christians do the exact same
26:47
thing. We hide our idols under the
26:50
camel's furniture and sit on them to protect them from God's
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search. We conceal the things we love
26:55
more than God, Spurgeon lists what these modern idols might
26:59
be. He says gold, dress, rank, honor
27:02
or even a forbidden thing. And then he touches on something
27:05
that hits incredibly close to home.
27:07
Yeah, he does. He says we can even make idols
27:09
out of our children or our spouses.
27:11
OK, I have to push back on that. It sounds intensely harsh to say
27:15
that loving a child or a husband can be idolatry.
27:19
How can loving your own family be a sin?
27:21
It sounds counterintuitive, I know.
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How can a listener possibly tell the difference between healthy,
27:26
God-given affection for their child and toxic idolatry?
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Sturgeon's answer relies on the definition of idolatry.
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An idol is anything that holds our love more than God.
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It is a question of priority and ultimate trust.
27:39
So it's about the weight you put on them.
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Precisely if your emotional stability, your sense of
27:45
purpose, and your joy are entirely dependent on your child
27:49
or your spouse, you've placed a weight on them that they were
27:52
never designed to carry. They have become your functional
27:55
savior. That makes sense.
27:56
They can't bear that weight. They can't, and Spurgeon issues
27:59
a stark warning about this. He says if you make an idol of a
28:02
child, either that child will be lost to you or something will
28:06
happen that makes your idol become your burden.
28:10
Ouch. If you idolize a husband, you
28:12
will eventually crush him under the weight of expectations only
28:15
God can fulfill. So when God promises to cleanse
28:18
us from these idols, it is not a threat to take away the things
28:22
we love. No, it is a massive blessing.
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He is removing the images of jealousy, as the text calls
28:27
them, that weigh down the human soul.
28:30
He is restoring the proper order of the universe within our own
28:32
hearts. We can actually love our
28:35
families better when we do not worship them.
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Because they are free to just be human.
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Yes, we have no wish, as Spurgeon says, that any of our
28:42
old Lords should retain dominion over us.
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The sweep of Ezekiel's promise as articulated by Spurgeon is
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breathtaking in its scope. It really covers everything it.
28:52
Moves from the contagious quarantine of our initial state
28:54
of sin. It exposes the absolute futility
28:58
of our attempts to wash ourselves with the snow water of
29:01
human effort. The muddy rags.
29:03
Right. It reveals the absolute efficacy
29:06
of the clean water, the substitutionary blood of Christ,
29:09
and the renewing power of the Holy Ghost.
29:11
And then it culminates in God himself sprinkling this water
29:14
upon us. Resulting in the total clearing
29:17
of the heart's cave, dragging out our hidden infamies and
29:20
smashing our secret idols. So as we wrap up this deep dive,
29:23
take a moment to look around your own internal landscape.
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Think about The Cave of Kings. Think about Rachel sitting in
29:29
the tent. What are the specific idols you
29:32
are currently hiding under your own Tamil furniture?
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We all have them. We do.
29:36
If the true Joshua came today to roll the stone away from The
29:40
Cave of your heart, what hidden infamies would be dragged out
29:43
into the sun knowing that the clean water of grace is
29:46
available? Are you ready to stop fighting a
29:48
lifeguard? Stop making excuses and let that
29:50
water wash them away for good.